Hocus Pocus, Keep Your Focus!
by liebedero
Summary: A story and challenge in one! Scooby Doo and the Gang split up and somehow have ended up all in a different spot, each wondering where the other is, with a mysterious monster watching their every move! A Read and write! R and R please!K  for mild peril...
1. Intro and Instructions

So I decided to create a new challenge… and then participate in it myself! The challenge is to the song featured in the Scooby Doo the Movie, _Bump in the Night by allSTARS*_:

Basically the challenge is a Scooby Doo situations prompt challenge: You need to come up with 10 Short story inserts 2 each for every member of Mystery Inc. (aka Fred, Velma, Daphne, Shaggy, and Scooby).

The gang, upon splitting up has eventually become completely separated. Create connecting situations in which every one finds themselves in a creepy situation and totally alone.

The Prompts for each chapter or section are as follows:

**1: A chill in the air…**

**2: A creak on the stairs…**

**3: A knock on the door…**

**4: They're out to get you, to capture you …**

**5: Howling and prowling; shivering, quivering, spellbound…**

**6: You cannot run and you cannot hide…**

**7: A bump in the night…**

**8: Who's Spooking who?**

**9: A shriek in the house….**

**10: It's freakin' me out…**

Simply choose two prompts to go with a character and create a multifunctioning mystery tale based off of the prompts!

Stay tuned for my accompanying story,_**Hocus Pocus, Keep Your Focus!**_

InkSpellWeaver


	2. A Chill in the Air

**1: A chill in the air…**

"Scoob?" Shaggy looked around shivering, as a chill fell upon the eerily empty corridor. He was all alone. "Freddie? Daph? Velma? Anybody there?" He shivered involuntarily as he shuffled along, footsteps muffled on the carpeted flooring of the ancient mansion that the gang was investigating. It was quite dark already, as Shaggy glumly listened to his growling stomach. The hunger pangs were distracting, which is why he was _never_ focused. Ever. On anything, that is, except for food.

"I could go for a double-decker vegetarian dark chocolate syrup submarine sandwich right about now," he mumbled to himself as he rubbed his complaining stomach miserably. "If only I could manage to find the kitchen…" For a moment he quit rubbing his stomach and rubbed his arms as he shivered once again against the cold of the house.

It was much too cold in the mansion for the time of year – it was early summer. "It must just be the creepy old house. It sure is huge!" He said loudly to himself as he peered into what seemed like the eighth bedroom on the floor. "Maybe the next room will be the kitchen?" He peered into the room as the large door creaked loudly, a sweep of air blowing the heavy layer of dust on the wood floor. I took in a long and large futon, an armchair sitting dejectedly next to it.

"No such luck, it seems," he sighed, feeling as forlorn as the old armchair had looked. He closed the door and kept walking, hoping alternately to find one of the gang, Scooby or the kitchen, and in that case hopefully Scooby too. It felt as though it had been hours ago that Scooby had disappeared around a corner and never came back.

It had been around that time when the unnatural chill had set in, settling down in Shaggy's bones. He backtracked just a little, not trusting himself to look over his shoulder and see some sort of spook. That would be just his luck he reasoned, as he crept backwards towards to spot were Scooby had disappeared, the chill growing ever stronger.

An unnatural whistling sound came from the clock in the corner. Clocks ticked, not whistled, didn't they? "Scooby?" Shaggy asked in a shaky voice as he peered into the glass door of the grandfather clock…


	3. A Creak on the Stairs

**2: A creak on the stairs…**

Velma crane her neck to look up the immense and winding stair that led to the top of the enormous manor, seven floors in all, all the way up to what she was sure was a creepy old attic. Places like this always had creepy old attics, and in those attics were of course creepy old suitcases and pictures lying on the floor collecting dust. And down? She was on the first floor, and just below her, in the cellar, past the door next to the vast staircase, was sure to be some strange happenings and weird people creeping around the house through secret passageways…

"I've been doing this _way _too long if I know so uniformly what I should be expecting…" Velma trailed off. As always she had gone off on her own, as nothing really scared her calculating mind any longer. Only in the rush of the moment – moments like those when Scooby and Shaggy where running, screaming, for their lives – did Velma feel the prickling of fear at the back of her neck.

And for once in her life, Velma decided to go _up _instead of down. Something in her gut said that to make assumptions based off of experience would be a mistake tonight. There were lots of stairs to walk up after all, plenty of floors for things to be happening on, and then if someone screamed she was in the ideal spot to get to where it had come from, and thus search for clues.

Yes, she reasoned. That was why she decided to go up, upstairs instead of _down_ against her natural instinct to search out the imminent danger. There was sound reasoning behind her decision, so there was no reason why she should doubt herself, and plenty of time to reverse her decision…

Velma started up the steps, one at a time, acutely taking every miniscule detail into her observation. She felt herself a master of detection, looking for clues was her purpose in life! A sense of elation filled her as she crept silently up the stair. _One hundred and forty –five, hundred and forty six, hundred and forty – seven…_

She brought her light footfalls down onto the hundred and forty-seventh stair when the stair groaned unexpectedly at her weight. She started slightly. Velma shook her head while she waited for her pulse to slow from its temporary spike.

The house was old; it was only natural for her weight to bring enough pressure onto one of the stairs that it should creak beneath her meager weight. Cautiously, so as not to coax anymore loud sounds from the woods steps, Velma shifted her weight over to the edge of the stair, away from the banister.

"There! That should banish unwanted sounds! It's just pure logic, that's all…" Velma reassured herself, taking a deep breath. She started back up the steps when she finally heard the shriek…


	4. A Knock on the Door

**3: A knock on the door…**

Somehow, he had lost Daphne. It always managed to happen somehow. As he sauntered into the sitting room, Fred wondered to himself why exactly it was that he bothered having the gang split up in the first place if they all managed to lose track of one another eventually anyways.

Freddie looked casually around the room for anything out of the ordinary. The entire house was covered in about an inch of dust, he reckoned, scanning for disturbed areas, where the dust had been wiped away or was thinner in consistency.

This case would be no problem. Velma would find the biggest clue, and Daphne would piece it together, Daph'd get caught and Shaggy and Scooby would run around like the goofs they were and eventually the plan would be ruined, but somehow they'd manage to capture the bad guy anyways. At least that is how he hoped it would go. It was so much easier when things were predictable, even though he never could get the perpetrator's identity correct.

But for once, just once, he hoped that his plan might actually capture the villain in the end without it getting messed up, just to prove that his traps actually _would _work, if ever given the chance. Not that it really mattered, just so long as the goon in a mask got put where he belonged – in jail.

Fred was getting distracted. Of course, that was bound to happen. He got distracted from the task at hand _by_ the task at hand. He shook his head at the inevitable. One thing always led to another and then he could remember where it was he had begun.

"Come on Jones, keep your head in the game, you've got this. Yeah, you've got this. Just keep your head about you and look for clues," he cocked an eyebrow at the bookcase that spanned the length of the wall. None of them looked as though they had been read in ages. In fact…

Tentatively, Fred reached out a hand to pull a rather thick looking novel off the shelf. It wouldn't come. "It's fake!" he exclaimed softly. Curling his hand into a fist, Freddie didn't even hesitate before rapping once on the fake books that made up the wall. An empty resounding sound resulted.

"Sure enough! It's hollow alright!" Fred grinned in spite of himself at his own ingenuity. Hollow! What a faux-pas! He instantly regretted it when a loud knock answered him on the other side.


End file.
